If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

The Oculus Summer Sale is on!

I picked up the "Summer Sale Bundle". 4 games for €70. Edge of Nowhere and The Climb have been at the top of my VR wishlist for a while. Raw Data I actually played when it was free on Steam for a weekend, it was solid a solid enough shooter, though I could take it or leave it really. Finally, Landfall is a twin-stick shooter which looks alright and has good reviews, so sure, I'll give it a go.

Apparently Daily Deals will be a thing in this. At the moment it's Arizona Sunshine at -30%, think I'll give it a pass and see if it comes up cheaper in the upcoming Steam summer sale.

Oh man, I love Ultrawings. Thanks for the recommendation, Thirith! Picked it up a couple days ago and I've been playing it obsessively. Basically it's an arcadey flying game where you do a bunch of challenges(fly through rings, take photos of landmarks, shoot baloons, etc.) in order to get money so you can unlock new airports and buy new planes. I just unlocked the fifth airport(out of 6), and I have 2 planes. A lightweight propeller-powered thingy, and a jet-powered glider. The latter gives you 3 or 4 "jet boosts" with which you can launch yourself up into the air, and then you glide back down, it's a lot of fun.

The physics are solid and the controls are fantastic. You actually use the motion controls to interact with them, to grab on to the flight stick and the throttle and to turn the knobs and flip the switches of the interface. There's pitch/yaw/roll, rudders, throttle, flaps. You do a short pre-flight procedure every time you take off but it's really just turning on the fuel, flicking on the electricity, pressing the ignition and cranking the throttle. There's enough there to satisfy the fantasy of flying a plane, without getting bogged down in all the complexities and minutiae of a proper flight sim.

Lone Echo's multiplayer component "Echo Arena" is in Open Beta on the Oculus Store. I played a couple matches of it, here's how that went:

I did actually score a goal at one point, but didn't get that captured on video.

Even if you're not interested in multiplayer shenanigans, I do recommend downloading it and playing the tutorial just to get a taste of the wonderful zero-G movement system they've devised here. It works well, though I think it'd work better if I had room-scale tracking. Sometimes when I try to push off from a surface behind me I end up flying sideways, probably because my sensors loose track of my controller hidden behind my body. Anyway, it's good stuff. It's fun and remarkably nausea-free.

It seems that Introversion's Scanner Sombre will get a VR update. From what I've heard about the game, it's deeply flawed, but the way it lets you visualise environments differently is one of its strengths, so colour me curious.

I ended up getting really into Echo Arena. Played it a bunch this weekend, in fact I was still playing it when the open beta ended an hour and a half ago. Everyone in the match vanished and it took me a moment before I realized what had happened. The fun's over, until July 20th. Lone Echo was already my most anticipated VR game, but now it's even more so. Knowing Ready at Dawn's previous output, I'm not expecting much from the story, but I look forward to flinging myself around in zero-G again.

I have been having a ton of fun playing The Mage's Tale. It's the first game that's kept me involved as a game, and it's also the first one where I can take the locomotion for extended periods of time without feeling nauseous. The only issue is that for me the initial load time is terrible, like 3 minutes. Others have reported having the same long load times in-game, but once I'm past the initial one, no loading time has ever been longer than 10-15 seconds.

Highly recommended. First-person, single-player dungeon crawl with spells that you "cast" by throwing them with the Touch controllers, as well as having a magic shield. Touch controllers are required.

I played some more Il-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad yesterday, now using the Vive.

It's great. I mean, it makes my 970 cry, but it looks amazing and plays well, and being able to look around the cockpit of my plane just by looking around really makes the action that much more immersive. It also makes it really obvious just how tiny those WW2-era aircraft are when you realize that your HOTAS setup is 'outside' the cockpit.

I'll probably pick up Ultrawings when it comes out for Vive because flying in VR is so much fun. I find myself wishing again that Elite had more to do in terms of combat, because that game does VR great but got boring pretty quickly.

Yes I have, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking into space combat at that price- but I find it a little hard to enjoy as a simulator when each mission is basically two minutes of fast-paced combat before the flagship jumps in and you either leave or die. I like it a lot but it's very limited in scope. What I'd really love would be to play something like Freespace or Wing Commander in VR, but there seems to be a dearth of that sort of game on the market.

X-Wing and TIE Fighter in VR, with updated controls and graphics, and I'd turn into an utter Star Wars fanboy again.

Does Battle of Stalingrad have anything like real tutorials? I found the IL-2 games I played utterly offputting to flight sim newbies. I don't mind having to put in an effort, but at least give me a chance!

Finally got room-scale properly set up last night (albeit I need to tidy cables in the long term). It moaned a bit because my front sensors are more than 3 metres apart (about 5), but it seems to work fine.
Still places my default facing in Home in a weird position mind you.

If you're going to go for it, be aware that Oculus don't recommend using more than 3 sensors.

I got Arkham VR and played some of it today. Like so many VR experiences, it's no great shakes as a game, but it's still very, very cool. I wouldn't have bought it at full price, but at the current rate it's worth it for any fan of the Arkham games and of Batman in general - which I'm not all that much, but I do love the sense of being in virtual spaces, and Arkham VR does this brilliantly. So much so that I didn't even mind having to experience the murder of Bruce's parents for the umpteenth time.

I also played some more I Expect You To Die, which is absolutely delightful.

I've just played some Arizona Sunshine, and boy, does it raise my heart rate... It's the first game I'm playing that heavily relies on teleportation, and IMO it does it very well (though I'm sure it'd be even better if I had more space to move in). For one thing, when you teleport, you can also turn, and it shows you your exact orientation, including the sensors. In whatever space you have, you can then step around to get close enough to doors, drawers etc. to open them and pick up equipment. What's really neat is that the environment is continuous; it's basically a linear level, but it very much feels like a coherent world. Zombies are also much more effective if they get right up in your face and start tearing at your flesh.

This one offers two-player coop, so henke, Malf, *anyone*: get Arizona Sunshine and help a mate out, 'kay? I'm sure I could be talked into Bridge Crew in return.

I'll have to play Robo Recall again; I remember it being very similar, but there was something about RR's teleport that didn't work so well for me. Maybe it's just that I wasn't used to it at the time. In any case, it definitely works well.

Does Battle of Stalingrad have anything like real tutorials? I found the IL-2 games I played utterly offputting to flight sim newbies. I don't mind having to put in an effort, but at least give me a chance!

I haven't looked into tutorials, but it does a much better job of unobtrusive hand-holding than previous games in the series. The HUD now gives useful feedback about what you're doing off to the side and a lot of more complex systems can be automated. I've been demoing it to friends by just sitting them in the chair, putting their hands on the stick and throttle, and that plus the trigger is all you need to dogfight. Whereas in Cliffs of Dover, if I tried that they'd overheat and destroy their engine within five minutes because they weren't watching the coolant temperature or propeller pitch or whatever. All that complexity is still in the game if you decide you want a challenge, it's just not mandatory.

How are you liking Arizona Sunshine? I've heard people complain that it's very difficult to hit enemies, which I thought was strange as my friends and I had no problems with AS. I suspect it may be in part that a lot of real-world shooting practices translate intact to VR, and now gamers are having to learn how to 'actually' shoot accurately.

Cool, I've just put Battle of Stalingrad on my list. I've also watched some YouTube videos and it does sound like a good way to get into IL-2.

I'm enjoying Arizona Sunshine. It's definitely not easy to hit enemies where it couts (i.e. mainly headshots), but I'm not a particularly good shot, and I definitely don't get the impression that the game's unfair in that respect. It just doesn't help the player (much).

It's the one VR game I have that feels pretty complete. It has the best practical gun controls I've used yet. And Hoarde Mode is fun too.

RE: hitting enemies where it counts.

For a video game. AS does a pretty good job of emulating how hard it is to actually hit anything with a pistol. I shoot the real thing whenever I get the chance, and I'd say they did a good job of making it very real in that regard. It gets weird later when you're using a Shotgun or SMG with one hand, but the pistol play is really good, emulating everything you'd feel in real life except the recoil and the weight of the firearm itself.